May 14, 2024
Thom Carroll/For PhillyVoice
The Free Library of Philadelphia on June 15 hosts a session where people can learn how to preserve recipe cards and family cookbooks for future generations to enjoy.
The Free Library of Philadelphia wants to help home cooks ensure their recipes for grandma's pies, that favorite family casserole or a legendary loaf of rye bread are preserved for generations to come.
The library's Rare Book Department at the Parkway Central Branch on June 15 is hosting Caring for Your Family Recipes, an event about ways to save family recipes and prevent them from the damage of time — or a stray glass of red wine. Attendees are encouraged to bring their recipes cards and family cookbooks to get tips from experts about how not just to preserve the information contained in these references, but also how to preserve the physical document upon which the recipes are written. The event is part of the library's larger exhibit on food's cultural presence and history.
Two experts from the Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts, an organization in Rittenhouse with conservators who repair and protect books, photographs, and documents, will share their knowledge. Those with recipes can receive general tips or have individual consultations on their family heirlooms.
"Family recipes are things that obviously connect us to the past, to each other, but also it expresses ourselves through those relationships," said Karin Suni, a curator with the Free Library's Rare Book Department. "The way we can pass those forward is by holding onto them."
Caring for Your Family Recipes is free to attend, and it will teach the best places to store cookbooks and recipe cards, whether or not they should be put in plastic sleeves, what kind of plastic best preserves paper and other useful tips.
"Obviously, not everyone can be in a situation where they have constant temperatures and humidities like we do in the Rare Book Department," Suni said, "but you don't necessarily have to in order to try and help make sometimes fragile things last for a long time."
There will also be a recipe swap, and the first 50 attendees get free cookbooks from the exhibit.
The event is part of the We Are What We Eat exhib that is on display until the end of August and uses cookbooks, recipes and artwork from the library's collections, to show the intersectionality of food, culture and self-expression. There will be activities to teach children about healthy eating and a display of cookbooks dating back to 1730. Suni said he wanted to show how food builds connections among people.
"Food is very universal, everybody has a relationship with food, good or bad or mediocre ..." Suni said. "The show, through looking at all of these materials from the collections, is really about how food creates connections and expresses relationships."
